Volunteers deserve a gold star

I had a blast doing the two volunteer projects during United Way’s internal campaign week that was held last week. The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Sacramento and Boys & Girls Club of El Dorado are where we did the volunteer projects. The Boys & Girls Clubs is our nonprofit funded partner for the STAR Readers project under the Education Impact Area. Some of the literacy activities included vocabulary freeze tag, learning to make smoothies, and my favorite, the scavenger hunt game. The scavenger hunt is about having the children read the clue and they tell you where to find it. It’s kind of like watching little children do the “literacy” version of the Amazing Race. Then, there are letters on the back of the clues that are used to de-scramble a phrase. The phrase leads to clues that give the order of the story. It may sound confusing but these children get it.

The other activities included learning to read ingredients like making pancakes or homemade ice-cream in a bag. I know what you’re thinking, little kids making homemade ice-cream? Not all were successful but all the children got real ice-cream in the end.

There were over 90 children at the Boys & Girls Clubs that participated in the activities. Not only did United Way staff help with activities, we brought books and decorations for the clubs that were collected from our staff.

Overall, the children may get a star for proficient reading but volunteers deserve a gold star too.